


Oranges

by boxparade



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: First Kiss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-15
Updated: 2011-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxparade/pseuds/boxparade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon wakes up to the sunset and realizes he’s the only one on the bus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oranges

Brendon wakes up to the sunset and realizes he’s the only one on the bus. It feels like morning, or maybe not because he’s lost track of time lately and only knows when to eat because Spencer will bring them food at set points in time, like there’s an alarm clock programmed into his brain from a lifetime spent babysitting Ryan.

Thinking of Ryan sets a sleepy smile on Brendon’s lips and he stretches out on the couch with a breathy sort of moan, leaving his arms above his head where they fall and closing his eyes to the fading orange light. He teeters on the edge of sleep for a few minutes before the bus shakes just a little bit and someone steps into it.

Brendon’s eyes shut automatically because Miranda-the-tour-manager will yell at him for taking up all the seating (she probably yells even when he’s asleep), Spencer will tell him he should be doing something productive, and Jon will crack jokes about how he missed this whole episode with a crazy fan and Gerard, and right now he wants to be left alone.

“Brendon?” The voice is not the voice Brendon expects to hear, because it’s Ryan’s and it’s _only_ Ryan’s. His breath catches and he considers opening his eyes, but he knows he would end up masking himself behind his campy voice and constant jokes and he doesn’t want Ryan remembering the ten-things-he-hates-about-Brendon. Not right now.

The footsteps stop when Ryan reaches the lounge and sees Brendon, and there’s a slight sigh and something tapping against the counter. The smell of Chinese seeps into the air and Brendon almost smiles when he realizes it must be dinner, and Ryan was bringing him food. Brendon waits and wonders if Ryan is going to just leave it there and let him sleep, or wake him up, but he does neither because Brendon hears a soft _fshh_ when Ryan sits down from somewhere to his left on the opposing couch.

Brendon waits, tries to figure out with his eyes closed what Ryan’s doing, but he can’t hear Ryan eating, or speaking, and he’s certainly not sleeping because he snores just a little bit when he sleeps. Brendon’s heart is beating faster and he tries to force it to slow down before his cheeks turn pink and he gives himself away. He must have failed because there’s a wisp of a laugh from Ryan’s lips and Brendon fights like hell not to blush even harder, or move.

He’s surprised he can hear Ryan’s movement at all over the rush of blood in his ears, but he recognizes the soft tap of his fingertips against the upholstery, strumming out a beat Brendon thinks is one of Spencer’s. Brendon doesn’t want to risk opening his eyes, but after another minute passes with nothing but the occasional _tap, tap, tap_ or the steady hum of breathing, he can’t not look. His eyes open into slits and he very slowly shifts his head to see Ryan, perched on the couch with his head leaned back against the window, eyes closed and something Brendon thinks looks like a smile, but he can’t tell and doesn’t particularly care because Ryan’s neck is endless and screaming _kiss me, bite me_ and Brendon shuts his eyes because his pants gave a little twitch. He curses his skinny jeans and thinks about dead puppies for a moment, and not Ryan, sitting across from him in a completely abandoned bus, skin still sparkly and clothes sticking to his frame from the heat outside.

Brendon reminds himself breathing is important, and slowly drifts back into his mock sleep, heartbeat fading from his ears as the sound of Ryan shifting on the couch fades in. Brendon’s never been good at sensing what people were going to do, or what they were thinking—that always seemed to be Spencer’s forte—but he swears he can feel Ryan’s eyes watching him, prodding at him, and he vaguely wonders what he’s thinking about, right now, watching Brendon in the dimming light. Brendon figures he probably looks ridiculous, all stretched out and lanky, shirt bunched up around his middle, arms splayed out above him, one leg dangling off the edge of the couch, all spindly and thin in his white-wash skinny jeans. He suddenly realizes his mouth is open, has been open, dangling limply and stupidly, and the treacherous heat rises to his cheeks again.

He hears something of a chuckle from Ryan—the kind he only ever lets sound when he thinks he’s alone and unheard—and silently curses his imagination, but apparently Ryan’s convinced he’s blushing in his sleep because he doesn’t poke him and say ‘quit faking it, you ass’. Ryan’s voice in Brendon’s mind is warmer and nicer than Ryan’s voice in reality, and Brendon kind of wishes he could make dream-Ryan love him, because then at least he’d have some version of Ryan to himself.

Brendon’s jolted from the hazy images of Ryan in his mind when real-Ryan is getting up, or at least what Brendon thinks getting up sounds like. He expects Ryan to walk out and leave him to his love affair with dream-Ryan, but the sounds of movement stop and Brendon waits with shallow breath to hear the footsteps fading away. Instead, he feels the soft _whoosh_ of warm air tickle his cheek, and he think it rather feels like someone breathing and _oh._

 __

Brendon stops breathing because he’s fifty percent sure Ryan is literally inches from his face, and fifty percent sure he’s finally slipped into a dream because Ryan would not have any reason to get this close, and Brendon figures if you stop breathing in dreams, it doesn’t matter. When his chest starts to hurt, Brendon starts breathing again because this means _really fucking close_ Ryan is real, and he doesn’t want anything fucking up this moment because Ryan’s breath had shifted from his teeth to his lips and if Brendon’s brain is working right, that means he's two seconds away from being— _bzzzzz._

Totally, completely fucked. Brendon’s eyes jump open and Ryan is rushing away from him faster than he can even see, and his hands fumble awkwardly for his phone, his motherfucking _evil_ phone that is trapped between two layers of denim and _won’t shut up._ He glances for a second at the screen to know who, exactly, he has to kill later for fucking this up, and then his eyes dart to Ryan and startle him another few inches back into the side of the bus.

Ryan is the epitome of a deer that’s about to be hit by a truck, or better yet, a freight train. Brendon only realizes _he’s_ the train when he lifts his hand half a foot and Ryan jerks back like he’s just been shocked. Brendon stares without moving, his hand frozen limply in mid-air, terrified to move or breathe or blink because the second Ryan leaves this bus, this moment shatters and Brendon knows he’ll never get another chance to bring it up.

When the staring does nothing more than keep them both exactly where they are, Brendon moves his hand slowly down as something of a warning and stutters with parched breath, “Um—” Ryan seems to shake at the word, but his fists clench the edge of the seat and he turns himself to stone. “That was—You were just—” when Brendon realizes he has no idea what Ryan was actually doing, because Ryan wouldn’t kiss him, he just _wouldn’t_ , he changes course and asks flatly “What were you doing?”

Ryan stares for one moment, blushes faintly in the next, and sputters around monosyllabic speech for awhile before getting out “Nothing—Just, I mean—It’s not. I wasn’t—I don’t—Nothing. Right.” He stands up too fast and sways for a moment before stalking off toward the front of the bus, and Brendon doesn’t even know where that desperate gasp of “no” comes from but he’s thankful for it, because it’s just strong enough to stop Ryan in his tracks, one hand clutching the metal bar at the front of the bus with white knuckles, like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Brendon thinks it probably is.

“Don’t.” Brendon hopes it’s enough of an explanation as he stands up and takes a few tentative steps toward Ryan. Brendon thinks he looks tiny and skittish, which is something he usually only thinks about himself, and his eyes dart up to meet Ryan’s gaze without meaning to. Brendon feels his throat burn when he sees the fear there, trapped behind a piercing brown with streaks of hazel, and he wonders how any more raspy words make it out because he certainly doesn’t think he’s capable of speech right now, not when Ryan’s here and three moments ago was _there,_ about to— “You were going to kiss me.”

“I—” Ryan croaks out and swivels for the door, but Brendon gets his hand around Ryan’s arm and pulls him back with every ounce of strength he has, nearly tumbling forward in the process because Brendon is very, very small and Ryan is not. Brendon looks up and their faces are way closer, and his breath hitches because he doesn’t know if he’s ever seen Ryan this close before, or if he ever will again.

Ryan’s eyes are glassy and wide, terrified of him, of _Brendon,_ and Brendon doesn’t think anyone’s ever found him terrifying before. He doesn’t like it, and he’s trying to figure out how to fix it but his eyes wander to Ryan’s lips and that’s all it takes for his brain to stall, eyes stuck uselessly on the only thing he can think about right now.

It takes maybe a second longer for Ryan to register where Brendon’s looking, and maybe another second for his breath to stop, too, plunging them into complete silence and stopping time for just a fraction of a second.

Somewhere in that fraction of a second, Brendon decides the only way to get himself breathing again is by dipping his head forward those last few spaces and then _Ryan._

 __

They both sort of lull helplessly, motionless, lips pressed together but not moving yet, until Brendon remembers _oh yeah, kissing_ and he starts breathing and moving his lips again. That thing beating in his chest decides to play hopscotch when his brain registers the _he’s kissing me back_ part, and for a moment Brendon feels light headed and dizzy, so he reaches a hand around the back of Ryan’s head and rests it there, pulling only enough for him to feel it.

Ryan’s tongue barely touches the bottom of his lip and Brendon’s parting his lips and letting Ryan in, tongues playing against each other and lips pressed hard between their teeth and Brendon thinks Ryan tastes like oranges and vodka. Brendon feels a pair of hands, _Ryan’s hands,_ burn marks into the side of his hips. He leans forward into the kiss, saying _yes, yes_ repeatedly in his mind as Ryan’s tongue darts in circles around his, and it’s messy and hungry and absolutely everything and nothing like Brendon thought it would be, all those times he got caught up in Ryan’s gaze or stared at his mouth when he laughed and smiled and was too drunk to notice.

Brendon’s in the middle of trying to pinpoint the one area of his mouth Ryan’s taste hasn’t pervaded yet when there’s burning, dry, tasteless air rushing into his mouth and cold spots on the sides of his hips. His eyes dart open unwillingly and Ryan’s staring at him with the same eyes he had minutes ago, wide and terrified and screaming _no, no, no_ just louder than the desperate _yes_ spinning through Brendon’s mind.

His mouth doesn’t recall how to speak until Ryan’s disappeared completely from his sight, leaving an empty space in front of Brendon as the words “don’t go” tumble uselessly from his lips, reaching nothing but the dead air around him, fading into silence that fails to shut out the screeching protests in Brendon’s mind.

Brendon stands frozen there for the better part of five minutes until he can barely taste Ryan’s oranges and alcohol anymore, and he stumbles back to the couch, his entire body melting into the sticky leather as he glares at the chinese food sitting on the table across from him, desperate to cling to Ryan’s taste even though he knows it’s already gone.

His stomach wins over after a ten minute battle, and he tries to keep from choking on orange chicken as his body cries against his will, shivering in ninety degree weather as the memory of two hands, fitted perfectly around his hips, burns into his skin, just painful enough for Brendon to know it was real.


End file.
